


burrow down to wait for spring

by pdameron



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Post Series, Reunions, hints at future SilverFlintHamilton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 01:46:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13823877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pdameron/pseuds/pdameron
Summary: “Mr. Hamilton, every person I have ever loved hates me. Your scorn, I’m afraid, just doesn’t hold a candle to theirs.”(or: in which Silver comes calling, and Thomas finds that he cannot hate him, not truly.)





	burrow down to wait for spring

**Author's Note:**

> huge shoutout to [kourtney](https://acejamesflint.tumblr.com) for beta-ing, because my usual beta, [anna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gammadolphin/pseuds/gammadolphin/works) is a dick who's only on s2 of black sails
> 
> truly i do not deserve such nice friends
> 
> title as always from a musical, this time it's dogfight

Thomas doesn’t need to see the crutch to know who it is sitting at his dining room table.

He doesn’t need to see the missing leg to identify Long John Silver: there’s no reason for anyone to break into the home of a humble fisherman and his bookseller cousin, unless they were to know who Mr. and Mr. Barlow truly are.

Thomas has always suspected that Silver would come calling some day; there was too much left unresolved between him and James to simply let sleeping dogs lie. He’s the only person, save for perhaps his wife Madi, who would bother looking for them.

Besides, he’s heard enough about those curls to feel confident in his assumption.

“You’ve got some nerve, coming here,” is all the greeting Thomas gives the man, his fists clenched tightly at his sides.

Long John Silver barely reacts to his words. A tired sigh, a quick glance to the exits, and then he speaks. “I know.”

“What business could you possibly have here? Don’t you have hapless merchants to steal from? Don’t you have a wife to attend to? Or has she moved on from her traitor husband? I suppose a queen would have little use for a lying thief of a king.”

A darkness falls over Silver’s features, his hands gripping at the crutch at his side as if it were some sort of sword, a weapon to attack with. Thomas has no doubt that crutch has done some serious damage in its time. “Tread carefully, _my lord_. I’ve been patient with your rudeness for Flint’s sake. Some of it, I'll admit, might even be warranted. But know this: should you speak of her with such glibness again I will not be so forgiving.”

It’s not an empty threat, Thomas knows, and yet he cannot find it within himself to be afraid of this man.

“Somehow I doubt you’d kill me, not after all you did to ensure our reunion.”

“Who said anything about killing you?” Silver retorts, a mean smirk on his face.

Thomas scoffs at that, and turns to hang up his jacket. He joins Silver soon after, sitting across from him with the table firmly between them. Better safe than sorry, he reasons.

“I’ve spent countless hours imagining this meeting, imagining giving you a piece of my mind, and yet now that you’re here I find I don’t know where to start,” Thomas admits. He’s never been a particularly angry man, but he wants to shout and scream, wants to throttle the man across from him for putting James in chains. The aggressiveness in Silver’s posture has faded now that Thomas has moved the discussion away from Madi, and in its place is an uneasy tension.

“I will admit, when I sent Flint to Savannah, shackles and all, one of the few things that _didn’t_ haunt me about the situation was what _you_ would think of me.”

“I don’t believe you’d particularly like to know what I think of you,” Thomas replies tightly, trying to keep his temper in check.

Silver laughs in his face, a hollow, mirthless thing. “Mr. Hamilton, every person I have ever loved hates me. Your scorn, I’m afraid, just doesn’t hold a candle to theirs.”

Thomas pauses at that. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table as he really looks at John Silver.

He’s a lot younger, at second glance, than he seems. The beard helps, as does the timbre of his voice, but the infamous Long John Silver is most likely no more than nine-and-twenty. Thomas has always imagined him to be closer to his and James’s age. His smile is surface level, at best, a facade he’s thrown up to try and deflect the anguish in his eyes. It is those eyes, those sad, _sad_ eyes, that truly betray how young the man is.

And Thomas finds that nearly all his righteous anger evaporates.

“Oh, dear,” he tuts, and Silver’s false grin fades, his brows furrowing at this shift in tone.

“What?”

“You hate yourself far more than I’ll ever be able to, I fear,” Thomas says, and he takes no pleasure in the way Silver flinches at his blunt words, the way he curls in on himself protectively.

Thomas is almost frustrated with himself. Long John Silver had been everything Thomas had expected when he’d first laid eyes on him, and he feels like a fool for not taking the time to look closer. James himself had told Thomas how desperately Silver had clung to his image, even before he was built up as a legend. This infamous pirate king upon closer inspection seems to Thomas little more than a traumatized, achingly lonely young man.

And, well, Thomas has always had a soft spot for the lonely ones. His relationship with James is a testament to that.

He might not approve of John Silver’s actions, but the boy is _lost_ , and James loves him. And that will have to be enough, for now.

“Well then,” Thomas says, standing up and walking over to grab a kettle for some tea, “you’ll just have to wait for James to come home. Then you’ll see how wrong you are.”

“I imagine there are a great many things you think I’ve gotten wrong. Which in particular are you talking about?”

Thomas rolls his eyes at this. It would seem that Silver, like James, has a flair for the dramatic. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Silver, but there’s at least one love of yours who doesn’t hate you in the least. Rather the opposite, I think you’ll find.”

He’s halfway across the room, but even from where he stands he doesn’t miss the sharp hitch in Silver’s breathing at his words, or the way his entire body stiffens in surprise.

“I understand you probably don’t believe me. But James will be home any minute, and he’ll put your mind, and hopefully your heart, in part, at ease.”

Silver shakes his head, confused. “No, I… Flint comes home at five o’clock. I watched for days, I made sure…”

Thomas isn’t even remotely surprised that Silver had done reconnaissance on them, or that neither he nor James had noticed his presence.

“Not on Fridays. On Fridays, he comes home at three o’clock.”

Silver stands suddenly, panicked, nearly knocking over his crutch in his haste to grab it. “No, I didn’t - I just wanted to know that he was alright, that he was happy, that _you_ were happy, I didn’t want him to - ” His breath is coming in short pants. He looks absolutely terrified, and Thomas wonders how it is he’d managed to misjudge John Silver quite so thoroughly. “He can’t see me, I can’t bear it - ”

But Silver’s too late: the door opens, and James’s usual greeting for Thomas dies in his throat at the sight of his old quartermaster.

Thomas doesn’t know where to look: Silver’s anxiety is stifling, hanging in the room like some sort of smoke for them to choke on; but the awed, wondrous look on James’s face is not unlike the one he wore two years ago when they’d first reunited.

In three long strides James is upon Silver, dragging him into a tight embrace. It takes a good ten seconds for Silver to react, so frozen in surprise is he, before he clutches onto James like a half-drowned man. The high-pitched, shaky breath Silver lets out as he sinks into James makes Thomas’s chest ache in sympathy.

Thomas should leave, he knows. He should give them a moment’s privacy. But, to be frank, he’s always been a nosy sort of person, and in many ways whatever outcome this reunion has will directly affect him. Plus, he does so love to see James smile.

And he does. Smile, that is. It’s a small, disbelieving thing, tucked into Silver’s neck, but it’s there nonetheless.

Thomas can just make out the words Silver is mumbling into James’s chest: _I’m sorry_ , over and over again, a pained mantra.

James pulls back, cups Silver’s cheeks in his hands, wiping away his tears with his thumbs. He’s done the same for Thomas, on nights when the memories of Bethlem overwhelm him. He can see the surprise in Silver’s eyes at the gesture: a tender, loving touch perhaps not in line with the Captain Flint that Silver had come to know.

“I forgave you long ago, John,” James says quietly, still smiling softly.

But Silver keeps going, the tears still falling. “No, it’s not - I’m not sorry for sending you to Savannah. I can’t apologize for that, I won’t - not when you’re _here_ , not when you’re whole, and alive, and when you have - ”

Silver seems to remember that Thomas is in the room, glances at him with wide eyes before taking a hasty step back, putting some distance between himself and James. His hands are still tightly fisted in James’s shirt, however, like he can’t bear to let go just yet.

James frowns slightly in confusion (Thomas, however, frowns in anger, for how could Silver feel no remorse for putting his friend in chains?), slips his hands from Silver’s cheeks to his biceps as Silver flounders for the right words.

“But I - I _betrayed_ you, and for that I am sorry. I should have told you as soon as I heard about Thomas, I should never have lied to you, and - I hurt you. I hurt you, and I’m so, so sorry. Captain, I only ever - ”

His voice cracks, he sucks in a shuddering breath, and Thomas, who was slightly miffed until about thirty seconds ago, feels a sudden urge to wrap the poor sod in a blanket. It’s mildly irritating. He blames these two years of James’s biased storytelling, as well as Silver’s surprisingly pretty face, for this reluctant compassion.

James pulls Silver in close and presses a chaste kiss to his forehead. Silver jerks back like he’s been electrocuted, finally letting go of James and shooting Thomas a panicked look.

If Thomas were a jealous sort of person, he’d be immensely satisfied with Silver’s reaction to this intimacy, with his immediate acknowledgement of Thomas’s importance to James. But Thomas has never been a jealous man, and he just wants James to be _happy_.

“I told you so,” Thomas says casually in response to Silver’s wide eyes.

This, of course, has Silver even more alarmed, and he whips his head back to James with an astonished, almost terrified expression.

James glances between Silver and Thomas, bemused. “What the fuck did you say to make him look like that?”

“I told him you loved him, of course.”

James frowns, looking back at Silver, frozen like a rabbit in the sights of a hunter. “Surely you knew that.”

Silver shakes his head, quivering like a leaf and clutching his crutch to him like a lifeline. “I didn’t - I thought, once, maybe there was something between us, but that was years ago, before...”

He trails off, looking dazed.

James looks to Thomas, almost as if to ask for his approval: he loves Silver, but he would never do anything to jeopardize their relationship, Thomas knows. He nods, smiling fondly. James needs this, and it’s readily apparent that Silver does just as badly, if not more.

James moves his hands to Silver’s waist and rests their foreheads together, breathing the other man in, holding him steady. “I do love you, John. I have for some time, now.”

The strangled, anguished sound Silver lets out at James’s confession is not pretty. He sounds like a wounded animal. He lunges at James, kisses him as if it were his last act on Earth.

James returns the kiss eagerly, tugs the man flush against him as he sighs into Silver’s mouth.

They look good together, James and Silver. There’s a brief moment where Thomas’s mind wanders, where he has flashes of tanned, ringed fingers running along freckled skin, of pale hands twined in thick curls - but that’s a thought for later, when Silver doesn’t look like he’s about to fly apart and when Thomas’s anger has truly faded. For he has no doubt that this is where they’ll head, one day, the three of them all together: James has spent enough time talking about how much Silver would have loved Thomas, and vice versa; and Thomas has more than once seen his eyes glaze over at the thought of the three of them together, much in the way they would as he watched Thomas and Miranda all those years ago.

Silver has started crying again, overwhelmed. Not the silent tears from before, but great, shuddering sobs, so intense that James breaks the kiss to tuck Silver’s face into his neck.

“I know, I know,” James starts to murmur, and it takes a moment for Thomas to realize that he’s responding to Silver, reassuring the man as he whispers declarations of love into his skin.

Thomas hadn’t had any doubts about Silver’s feelings, but the confirmation settles something in him. The sight of James holding Silver, looking over his shoulder at Thomas with tears of joy in his eyes, is a picture that will never leave him.

They will have their fair share of obstacles ahead of them, for they are each as damaged as the other, and there is as much unresolved conflict and darkness between the three of them as there is untapped potential for good. But Silver is here, and he loves James just as much as Thomas, and for now, that’s all he needs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> sidenote:
> 
> i think the post-series relationship between madi and silver would be very complicated. i genuinely don’t know if she would ever forgive him for betraying her, no matter his intentions. I have no doubt that they loved each other till the bitter end and i could probably write 10,000 about them, but this particular fic was more about thomas seeing silver and flint’s relationship with his own two eyes than it was about answering all the questions we (re: I) have about madi...does that make sense?
> 
> Anyway the point is i love madi please don’t think i’m just ignoring her
> 
> my black sails tumblr is [ slverjohn](https://slverjohn.tumblr.com), if anyone's interested!


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